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Tag Archives: Citizenfour (Poitras)

“Colors, like scents, are a royal road from the outside world to our emotions.” — Peter Schjeldahl*

The Underground Museum—founded in Los Angeles in 2012 by artists Noah Davis and Karon Davis—is dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art, and serving as a cultural hub for low-to-moderate-income communities.

According to UM director Megan Steinman, the museum’s current show ARTISTS OF COLOR—the third UM show curated by Noah Davis before his death in 2015—explores “how color is perceived or deployed, and how that can shift over time or by culture.”** Artists represented in the show include Josef Albers, Lita Albuquerque, Michael Asher, Jo Baer, Jeremy Blake, Noah Davis, Dan Flavin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joe Goode, Carmen Herrera, E.J. Hill, Jim Hodges, Jennie C. Jones, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Imi Knoebel, DianaThater, and Brenna Youngblood.

The museum has strong local partnerships with LAXART, MOCA, and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. and future programming will be organized by Karon Davis (Noah’s wife), artist and director Kahlil Joseph (Noah’s brother), and MOCA chief curator Helen Molesworth.

“If you’re not fighting every day for what you believe in, and another day disappears, you are losing.” — Julian Assange, in RISK

Laura Poitras began filming RISK—her very up-to-date look at Assange’s activities thusfar—before she shot Citizenfour.* Shortly after the 2013 events documented in the Edward Snowden documentary transpired, Poitras and Assange had a falling out. As it happened, once U.S. intelligence agencies became aware of Snowden’s location in Asia, Wikileaks editor and advisor Sarah Harrison was instrumental in securing the NSA leaker’s safe passage from Hong Kong to Moscow. Assange apparently felt that Poitras should—naturally—disseminate her Snowden material via Wikileaks. Poitras disagreed.:

“I tell him I can’t be his source. I don’t tell him that I don’t trust him.” — Laura Poitras, on Assange, in RISK

Three years later, in the run-up to the 2016 election, Assange agreed to let Poitras set up cameras inside his residence at the embassy of Ecuador in London, and she continued to film her documentary.

On Saturday night, May 6, in Hollywood, Selmadirector Ava Duvernay will participate in a Q & A with Poitras following the 7:30 pm screening of RISK. On Sunday, Poitras will be joined in a second Q & A by Alex Winter.

*CITIZENFOUR, Poitras’ documentary about Edward Snowden, was released in late 2014 and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary the following spring. RISK, released in May 2017, includes footage from congressional-hearing testimony by FBI director James Comey shot less than two months earlier.

“PARISLA is born of shared perspectives. It’s a project, like a love story, that comes from the feeling of being in one place, thinking about another. A place between two cities, between scenes, between people, that exists only in the space of our imagination. In Paris, dreaming of the Pacific. Speaking French in LA. And it’s as true as a clear blue sky above us.”—Dorothée Perret, founding editor (Paris, November 9, 2008)